


the fire on high

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [2]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Apocalypse, Strong Language, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:08:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Tammy and Wheaty, after the bombs.
Relationships: Tammy Barnes & Wheaty
Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789369
Kudos: 9





	the fire on high

They made it as far as the Elk Jaw Lodge.  
  
It had been Tammy’s idea to run for the Whitetails. They knew the State Park the best, and if they found _something_ familiar they could figure out where the nearest bunkers were. And then it was just a matter of hunkering down and staying alive until they could get back to the Wolf’s Den.  
  
The car they’d stolen from the Eden’s Gate compound only got them a few miles before they had to get out and run.  
  
“ _Tammy!_ ” Wheaty had called out in panic more than once, losing sight of her in the smoke.  
  
“Here!” Tammy would stand still, vision swirling from the noxious combination of heat and ash, and yell until he found her again. It occurred to her that it might be better to just hold his damn hand until they got somewhere safe, but she didn’t want to let go of her gun and didn’t want Wheaty to let go of his. It was burned into her brain: Conserve weapons, conserve ammo.  
  
But what for, now?  
  
For the animals smoldering and dying in the fires raging around them?  
  
For the Peggies that had just been blown to hell?  
  
They followed the road, the only reliable, consistent thing they could see until they nearly tripped over the remains of the Elk Jaw Lodge’s sign in the middle of the pavement. “Hug the right-hand side of the road,” Tammy instructed. “Look for the path down to the lodge.”  
  
The fact that the Elk Jaw Lodge was still standing was a proper fucking miracle as far as Tammy was concerned. The trees periphery of the property had been blown over into the road and the water, but none had fallen on the lodge and the building showed no signs of fire damage so far. Inside, it looked just the same as it had the last time Tammy had been inside of it. The Whitetails had been diligent in cleaning out the wolf carcasses and everything else the Peggies had been doing here.  
  
“Hello?” Wheaty called out once they were inside. “Anyone here?”  
  
Silence.  
  
A quick walkthrough of the building revealed that it was empty.  
  
What had happened to the Whitetails? Had they fled for the Wolf’s Den already? Had they fled to another bunker somewhere, or maybe to Fall’s End? They weren’t too far from the border of Holland Valley, after all. Unless there were some bodies outside that they hadn’t seen, there were no members of the Whitetail Militia left at the lodge.  
  
Except for Wheaty and Tammy, of course.  
  
“Tammy,” Wheaty croaked, voice strained. “I gotta drink something.”  
  
She just nodded, patting his shoulder to signify that she’d heard. Tammy didn’t want to open her mouth, afraid of losing what little moisture was still there. She needed to drink too, and soon. And they both needed to clean up as well, because Wheaty was barely recognizable with ash caked on his face and Tammy didn’t figure that she looked all that much better.  
  
Well, option one was the closest: Tammy went to a sink and turned the tap.  
  
The water came out gray and clogged with clumps of ash.  
  
_Of course: The lodge gets its water supply from the lake,_ she thought, shoulders sagging with disappointment.  
  
She washed her face with the tainted water, and told Wheaty to do the same. Then she went about looking for something, anything, to strain the water with: They had to drink, and if this was all they had then they would have to make do. Eventually she found a package of coffee filters and tore them open, slowly straining the water into mugs by the sink.  
  
“Tastes like ash,” Wheaty coughed, making a face after gulping a little water down.  
  
“No shit,” Tammy grunted.  
  
“How long do you think the fire will last?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“How many bombs do you think were dropped?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“How do-”  
  
“I _don’t fucking know,_ Wheaty!” Tammy barked.  
  
Wheaty fell silent.  
  
Tammy slid to the ground, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Sorry,” She said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”  
  
Wheaty slid down beside her, and laid his head on her shoulder.  
  
“When should we leave?” He ventured quietly.  
  
Tammy sighed. “When the fires stop.”  
  
The fires raged for days.  
  
Years and years ago there had been a wildfire that had come over the mountains to the east and ravaged a chunk of the Henbane, and Tammy remembered that fire burning for days too. One would think that the intensity of the fire would burn everything to ash quickly, but it wasn’t the case. Now the same thing was happening: No more bombs were dropped, there were hunks of charred trees and debris everywhere, but the fire raged on nevertheless.  
  
The heat from the fire was the biggest challenge. It had to be more than a hundred degrees, and that meant they had to drink the still-tainted water more often than they would like. Fortunately there was some limited food left in the lodge from the Whitetails that had been occupying it recently, but they had to ration it harshly to keep it lasting until the fires burned out. Unfortunately, being uncertain as to when exactly the fires _would_ stop, it was unclear just how harsh they should be with the rations. If they could afford to eat a little more every day than not, it would keep their strength up until they could move somewhere else.  
  
After all, they didn’t know when they’d be able to find more food either.  
  
Still, no matter how much or how regularly they ate or drank, Tammy and Wheaty began to decline.  
  
Tammy didn’t know nearly enough about nuclear science to know what was happening to them on a chemical or biological level, what it was specifically that was having this effect on them: It could have been radiation, it could have been the ash in the water they were drinking, it could have been the lack of food, it could have been the oppressive heat affecting the air-quality, she had absolutely no fucking idea. All she knew was that it was happening too quickly to be starvation.  
  
Wheaty took up a position by a door at the front of the building, staring outside through the cracked door, rifle slung across his lap. “Don’t think the Peggies are going to be coming this way at this point,” Tammy remarked.  
  
“Not looking for Peggies,” Wheaty returned, not looking at her. “I’m looking for survivors.”  
  
Survivors.  
  
Fuck, but they barely had enough food to go around.  
  
Tammy was a pretty ruthless woman- she knew and accepted this truth about herself. But she was not ruthless enough to turn away another survivor if they happened to stumble across the lodge. Whitetail, Cougar, civilian, it didn’t matter; she wouldn’t be able to tell them no if they needed food or shelter. Nobody would be turned away, however badly it lowered Tammy or Wheaty’s chances.  
  
Except for the Peggies.  
  
If they came knocking and asking for help from the lowly fucking _sinners_ they’d been more than happy to slaughter for the last few months, she’d just as happily tell them to go pray to their fucking _Father_ to save them from this hell.  
  
They spent a lot of time sleeping- or trying to. Occasionally Tammy would manage a few minutes only to shock awake, coughing on the thick, hot, smoggy air. Her stomach ached, probably from drinking the gross water, and that sure didn’t fucking help either. Wheaty seemed much the same; and when he did manage to sleep, Tammy would often see him spring up, suddenly awake and panicked before remembering where he was.  
  
She didn’t ask him what was shocking him awake. She was smart enough to make a few educated guesses.  
  
It was in the moments when Wheaty was too still that Tammy began to panic, quietly creeping over to make sure his chest was still moving. When she saw that he was, or when he twitched or mumbled in his sleep, she would drag herself back to her corner and shut her eyes again.  
  
What else was there to do? The ash and smog was too thick: They’d never find their way to the Wolf’s Den, and with as much water as they were compelled to drink _now_ , hiking through the woods would probably demand that they drink more- and there was no was to guarantee they’d have access to enough of it.  
  
So they stayed put in the lodge, days blending together as they grew weaker, and weaker, and weaker.  
  
Tammy woke up on a particular… Morning? It seemed light enough to call it morning, not that it really mattered at this point anymore. But she did wake, and after checking the window to see if things had cleared up, she crawled over to Wheaty and put a hand on his arm, giving him a little shake.  
  
“Wheaty, get up,” she mumbled, scrubbing a hand across her (undoubtedly filthy) face. “I wanna see if we can walk the shoreline and find some cleaner water.” It was a dim hope that would probably yield nothing, and she hated to drag Wheaty along, but as shitty as she felt she was afraid she might fall into the lake and not be able to get out. “Wheaty, come on, I…”  
  
Tammy stopped. Wheaty hadn’t even grunted at the shaking, hadn’t tensed or tried to pull away at all. In fact, he was really…  
  
…Really limp.  
  
She stared down at him for a moment, shock penetrating through the haze. Hands trembling, she knelt down and put her ear next to Wheaty’s mouth- she didn’t hear him breathing. Tammy pressed her hands to his chest.  
  
There was no heartbeat.  
  
Wheaty wasn’t breathing.  
  
“Aw,” Tammy said, voice shaking, and turned away. “Fuck. Wheaty- fuck.”  
  
Wheaty was gone.  
  
What the fuck had even done it? She hadn’t noticed any particular decline the last few times they’d spoken (to be fair, Tammy was fuzzy on how recent those occasions had been), hadn’t noticed any particular signs that he’d been going under and that she was on the verge of losing him.  
  
Tammy crawled back to her corner, curled in on herself, and cried silently.  
  
It’s not like she had anyone to stay strong for- not anymore.  
  
Time got real fluid after that. Tammy went down for the grief and stayed down because it was too hard to move again. The light changed, growing darker and lighter intermittently, but it was hard to tell what was night and what was day from the shifting clouds of ash and soot that obscured any natural light. Her cheek went numb from being pressed against the floorboards, and her left arm tingled unpleasantly from staying in one position for too long.  
  
It was the noise that snapped her out of it eventually: Tammy had become accustomed to the crackling of burning and collapsing trees, the roar of fire and hot wind. The sounds she was hearing now were more animalistic than that, and far closer than Tammy would like. She forced herself to sit up, and caught sight of a shadow moving outside one of the windows- it was big, maybe a moose, or an elk, or-  
  
**_THUD._**  
  
A grizzly.  
  
Fuck. Of course a fucking _grizzly_ would have to survive this shit.  
  
Tammy held no illusions about her ability to defend herself. She was too weak to run or even lift her shotgun- her aim would be off even if she could, and even then there was no way she’d be able to get off enough shots to kill a grizzly bear before it could maul her. Of all the ways Tammy had thought she would go, death by grizzly bear mauling was not one she’d been hoping for.  
  
She sat perfectly still as the bear squeezed through the door it had just knocked open, an enormous mass of fur and claws and big, sharp teeth. Maybe if she played dead it would walk away and leave her to die in peace. Or maybe once it was gone she could drag herself upstairs to avoid it if it came through again. Maybe-  
  
And then Tammy saw the charred collar around its neck.  
  
“Cheeseburger?”  
  
The bear turned to look her way. For a moment Tammy wondered if she’d made a mistake, because Cheeseburger might be tame but he was still an injured, frightened wild animal that might decide survival was better than human companionship. There was a good chance that he might decide to take a chunk out of her now. Hell, she wasn’t sure she could blame him if he did.  
  
But then Cheeseburger stepped forward and nuzzled his face against Tammy’s head, and she relaxed.  
  
“Good boy, Cheeseburger,” she whispered, reaching up to scratch a part of his neck that didn’t look injured. “Good boy.”  
  
He was in bad shape: He was visibly thinner than a grizzly should be, and he was covered in a patchwork of scars and burns. Tammy didn’t figure that he had very long left, especially considering how little food and water there was to drink. Obviously he’d been in roughly the same situation that she and Wheaty had been in (worse, even) and since Wheaty had actually died from it, it wasn’t shocking at all that he seemed to be nearing his own end too.  
  
Tammy, come to think of it, was probably close to hers too.  
  
As the hours crept by and Cheeseburger overturned tables and chairs, probably searching for food, Tammy found that her energy was draining noticeably. She and Wheaty had spent so much time inside the lodge since the bombs, had moved so little to conserve energy and reduce the need for food or water, there was no reason for her to feel so god-awfully bad and weak and tired as she did.  
  
She couldn’t leave.  
  
She couldn’t avoid the ash, the heat, or the radiation.  
  
She couldn’t drink more water or eat more food.  
  
It occurred to Tammy that if she slept now, there was a good chance that she would not wake again.  
  
The realization should have been more earth-shaking, but it was not; her exhaustion was so complete that even death couldn’t shake her from it.  
  
And so Tammy sat down against Cheeseburger’s back (he’d finally given up on looking for food and had just dropped down nearby), feeling the shallow rise and fall of his breath beneath her head and neck. He made a small noise that sounded less like discomfort and more like the sounds he used to make when the kids at the FANG center would pet him. She barely noticed the smell of burnt fur and flesh, and he didn’t seem to mind that she was using him for a bed.  
  
“Thanks, Cheeseburger.”  
  
Tammy shut her eyes, body sagging against the bear’s.  
  
And eventually, the darkness swallowed her.  
  
-End


End file.
